


hymns of hate in memorandum

by procrastinatingbookworm



Series: Hello, I'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same? [1]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: (meet sort of ugly and gory actually but who's counting), ALL the issues, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Gore, Bugs & Insects, Caretaking, Everyone Has Issues, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Meet-Cute, Mental Health Issues, Self-Esteem Issues, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Suicidal Thoughts, Trust Issues, but that's not a fic i'm ready to write, references quirrel and his thoughts at the blue lake, sensory issues, they're not exactly focused on self-preservation, this is quirrel and tiso after all, wound care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:20:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26823541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: The Knight meddles. Quirrel wanders. Tiso gets an unexpected second lease on life.
Relationships: Quirrel & Tiso (Hollow Knight), The Knight & Quirrel (Hollow Knight), The Knight & Tiso (Hollow Knight)
Series: Hello, I'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same? [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1957039
Comments: 18
Kudos: 132





	hymns of hate in memorandum

Quirrel didn’t mean to end up at the Colosseum. 

He never really means to end up  _ anywhere _ , to be frank. Once he can’t stand still anymore, he starts walking, until he finds somewhere else to stand, or sit, or sleep.

He could almost sleep here, half-submerged in the hot spring, but the noise of the Trials going on and on above his head is too loud and cacophonous, setting all his nerves on edge.

He could tune out a noise if it was a singular drone, like the rain on the glass in the City of Tears, or the labored breathing of the Old Stag waiting for a passenger, or even the pulse of infection that seems to echo down every corridor, no matter where in Hallownest Quirrel goes.

If a sound was steady, uncomplicated, repetitive, Quirrel could put it to the back of his mind. Everything made noise. It was yet another thing that Quirrel had learned to live with: noise, even when he wanted to sleep.

There was no way of ignoring  _ this _ particular noise, even chest deep in warm water and tired enough that his usual vigilance had fallen by the wayside. 

There’s the shouting, the clash of metal against chitin, the hiss of acid, the sick wet sound of blades or claws or spikes or teeth going into flesh. The roaring of the crowd, the clatter of Geo as bugs die and bets are cast and Trials are won and victors are rewarded. The scrape of bodies against the ground as the arena is cleared, the crashing metal of the gates opening and closing and opening again.

Quirrel feels vaguely sick, and it has nothing to do with the gory spectacle of it all. He’s seen worse. He’s done worse.

It’s just too  _ loud. _ He’s tired, he can’t get warm even in the hot spring, his mask feels heavy on his head and his nail feels heavier—despite the fact that he’s barely holding it, just his fingers wrapped around the hilt so no one gets confused about whose it is.

Everything feels heavy. The world feels heavy. It could be the fact that there’s stone above his head instead of stars, but Quirrel thinks that he could stand under the open sky and still feel weighed down.

Quirrel’s just about made up his mind to leave, just get up and  _ flee _ the awful sound, maybe not to the lake but at least  _ somewhere else _ —to the Wyrm with his aching legs and sore arms and exhaustion so deep that he’s not sure how far he’ll be able to go before he has to sit down again—when he hears a familiar patter of footsteps.

The tiny wanderer comes running into the Hot Springs at full tilt, and they’re not alone.

They’re dragging a much taller bug behind them—an ant in a blue hood, carrying a shield on one arm, looking rather poorly, to say the least.

Before Quirrel can so much as exclaim, the wanderer shoves the ant unceremoniously into the hot spring. Quirrel startles at the splash, yanking his mask down to shield his eyes from the spray.

The ant doesn’t even yelp. It sinks into the spring, nearly going under.

Quirrel lets go of his nail and wades across the spring, catching the ant by its upper elbows and holding it upright. “There now, we can’t have you drowning. That would be counterproductive.”

The wanderer stands on the edge of the hot spring, trembling. They take a step into the water, and the shaking turns so violent that for a horrible moment Quirrel thinks they’re infected—that the shuddering of their tiny form and the darkness seeping down their cheeks are their body’s last death throes before the infection wins out.

But no. They’re not infected. They’re crying.

Quirrel makes a noise in the back of his throat—half exasperated, half upset—as he tries to keep the barely-conscious ant’s head above the water and still have an arm free to gather the little wanderer against his side.

He knows they’re not a child, but they’re still the size of a grub, small enough to be lifted and settled on Quirrel’s hip. They latch themself onto him, fingers digging into his carapace. It hurts a little, especially when the clawtips he didn’t know they had slip between the edges of two plates, but Quirrel doesn’t begrudge them the clinging. They’ve been through enough to earn a little desperation.

He has other things on his mind, at the moment. Like the strange ant doing its best to drown, despite Quirrel’s grip on its arm.

And still, the roar above his head. The wanderer clings and cries without noise, the ant slumps downward, greenish haemolymph staining the waters of the hot spring ( _ it’s been so long since Quirrel’s seen the haemo of a living bug and not the sickly orange of infection _ ) and the crowd in the Colosseum howls in delight as a nail pierces chitin, pierces flesh. 

From the terrible, distant quiet of his own head, Quirrel imagines he can hear the body hit the sand, though he knows, he  _ knows _ it’s too small, whatever it is, to make a noise.

Quirrel feels his legs trembling, barely strong enough to hold the weight of one, much less three, and then he doesn’t feel  _ anything _ , his mind falling back from his body, trying to keep one from the weakness of the other—though which is which he isn’t sure. 

It’s all so  _ heavy. _

Quirrel doesn’t know how long he stands there, head spinning with formless desire to just  _ give up _ , before the ant opens its eyes.

“What,” it— _ he, _ probably—says, in a nasally lisp of a voice. “What, where am I, who are you?”

“Quirrel,” Quirrel says. “Can you hold your own weight?”

“Can I hold my own—” the ant starts, an offended tilt to his voice, “Of  _ course _ I can…”

Quirrel drops him. The ant yelps, and sputters, but he doesn’t go under.

The wanderer is still clinging like a limpet, but not shaking so badly. Quirrel gives them a once-over, and decides the ant—still leaking haemo into the water and making odd, strangled sounds of pain—needs more of his attention.

“Wanderer,” Quirrel says. “I need my arm back.”

It takes a moment, but the tiny thing detaches themself and drops down, sinking nearly to the eyeholes of their mask in the spring. It might just be Quirrel’s vision wavering, but it seems like they start to glow as they submerge.

The ant is still stammering, but Quirrel can’t pick out any words between the trills of pain. Is he even speaking Common?

Quirrel starts moving before his mind finishes assessing what he sees. He takes the ant by the upper elbows again, this time to lift him far enough out of the water to get a look at his wounds.

“What’s your name?” Quirrel asks, ignoring the way the ant tries to strike him with the edge of his shield. 

“Tiso,” the ant snarls. “Put me down.”

“I don't think the spring will be enough for this,” Quirrel replies, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. Tiso seems like the type to read mockery from concern. “If you’ll sit still a moment, I can probably take care of it, though.”

“I didn’t ask for help,” Tiso snaps. His voice is so thick that it almost seems accented, but Quirrel hasn’t heard a single language other than Common in all his time in Hallownest. Perhaps Tiso is a traveler like Quirrel, and he speaks his own language where he comes from.

“But you need it,” Quirrel says, as gently as he can, expecting Tiso to try to hit him again.

Instead, the ant deflates, chin dropping low until his face is all but hidden in his hood. A worrying reaction, for someone so full of rage even from death’s door, but Quirrel can pick his brain later. He needs to make sure Tiso doesn’t die, for the moment.

Quirrel’s hands still don’t feel like his own, but his instincts are good enough to fetch his medical supplies from his hood and start to tend the gash in Tiso’s side. It’s not the only wound—the ant’s torso is more wounds and spilled haemo than unmarred chitin, but the jagged laceration is the one most likely to kill Tiso the quickest.

The wanderer tugs on Quirrel’s arm, startling him.

“I’m sure you have more to do, little wanderer,” Quirrel says. “I’ll take care of him.”

They stand there a moment longer, as if in contemplation, then splash out of the spring, leaving damp footprints on the stone as they leave.

Quirrel tends to Tiso, the same way he’d clean his nail or bandage his own wounds, the same way he’d kill an infected husk or break down a weak wall.

Tiso doesn’t say a word as Quirrel works. Quirrel is only sure he’s still alive because he can feel the ant’s pulse under his fingers as he winds the tail end of the bandage holding Tiso’s abused exoskeleton together up and around his shoulder.

Above, something—a Mawlek, if Quirrel’s memory for noises serves—screeches its death cry. Quirrel twitches, his hand slipping against Tiso’s haemo-slick shell.

Chitin crackles under Quirrel’s fingers, and Tiso  _ mewls _ , a pathetic, grublike sound that makes Quirrel wince in secondhand shame.

Under the shield that he still hasn’t relinquished, Tiso’s arm is broken. Just…  _ snapped _ , like old glass, under the weight of whatever he’d been blocking with that shield of is.

How in the Wyrm’s name is Tiso still  _ conscious _ ? He’d  _ hit _ Quirrel with that shield, without even a flinch.

Quirrel pulls the shield from Tiso’s arm, bile rising in his throat as the woven silk strap catches on the damaged chitin, dragging flakes of it loose.

Tiso sobs quietly, more a sound of grief than pain. Quirrel doesn’t look at his face, keeping his gaze on what’s left of Tiso’s arm.

Quirrel’s head spins. He can bandage wounds—no traveler lasts long without that skill—but this sort of damage is something entirely different.

There’s another death scream from above, of a creature Quirrel is less certain of, and his mind puts the pieces together.

The gash across Tiso’s side. The acid spatters on his hood and face. The broken arm.

The wanderer’s disappearance from Quirrel’s side, timed with the sudden rise of noise from above as a Trial began.

“Did you retreat, or did our friend have to drag you out of there?” Quirrel asks, and Tiso’s flinch speaks volumes.

Quirrel picks loose chitin from around the break. He keeps picking at it even as haemo seeps into the joints of his fingers, and then stops, because if he keeps going, he isn’t sure there will be any arm left at the end.

“The Mawlek, I assume,” Quirrel says, fishing out another roll of woven silk gauze from his hood and starting to wrap it around Tiso’s arm. Tiso nods, absently. “I hope your arm was worth your life—you would have been crushed if you’d taken its weight anywhere but on your shield.”

Tiso barks a laugh, so loud and ragged that Quirrel nearly drops the gauze.

“Pray tell, Quirrel,” Tiso says, and Quirrel is distracted for a moment by the way his name sounds in that nasally voice. “What’s the use of a warrior without a way to hold his weapon?”

Oh.

_ Oh. _

It’s Quirrel’s turn to laugh. How painfully ironic, this chance meeting.

Tiso’s eyes widen under the shadow of his hood.

“Tell me,” Quirrel says. “Was that your goal when you came here, or would it just have been a happy accident?”

“I came here to fight,” Tiso answers. “To win, if I could. A warrior that can’t hold their own will die. That’s the way of things.”

“Well, you aren’t dead,” Quirrel says, tying off the gauze with a flourish. “What will you do now?”

“Losing warriors are dropped from the cliff into the acid pits,” Tiso says, flatly, and Quirrel may know exactly how he feels, but that doesn't mean that tone of voice is any less worrying.

“There now,” Quirrel says, surprised to find himself struck with a sudden sense of obligation. “There’s more to Hallownest than the Colosseum. I’m sure you’ll find something to do.”

“Ironic of you to say, isn’t it?” Tiso snarks.

Quirrel doesn’t answer, because of course, Tiso is right. Looking away, he eases Tiso back into the hot spring, submerging his bandaged wounds so the SOUL in the water can get to work on healing them, and finally lets some of the tension in his shoulders go when Tiso sighs in some measure of contentment.

The peace doesn’t last long—a Heavy Fool trundles into the room and splashes into the hot spring, splattering Quirrel with haemo-stained water before he can get his mask down.

Tiso’s gone still.

Decisively, Quirrel picks up his nail and sheaths it at his hip. He reaches for Tiso’s shield, and slides it over his arm and up to his shoulder. It fits snugly just above the joint, hardly limiting his movement at all.

“Do you have a place you’ve been staying?” he asks Tiso, crouching down in the water. Tiso shakes his head. Quirrel smiles brightly. “I suppose you’ll have to come with me, then.”

“Shove off,” Tiso mutters.

“Do you think you can stand?” Quirrel forges on, laying a hand on Tiso’s good arm.

Tiso glances at the Heavy Fool, at Quirrel, and then down into the murky water. “I doubt it.”

Quirrel doesn’t know if he’ll be able to walk either, but that doesn’t stop him. In one movement, as smooth as he can make it, he lifts Tiso out of the spring, hefting him in his arms, before he clambers out himself.

“This will be quite the adventure,” Quirrel declares, once his legs have stopped trembling quite so badly.

“Do  _ you _ have a place you’re staying?” Tiso asks.

Quirrel thinks of the wide, clear expanse of Blue Lake. “I’ll find somewhere.”

“What a pair of fools we make,” Tiso scoffs, but he’s smiling.


End file.
